shows us the challenges confronting a rural health care facility in monroe wisconsin. very rarely do we see a vaccinated patient. reporter: behind six quiet icu curtains. the people who stay here in crisis for days, weeks. these patients do not improve overnight. they do not improve over days. it s weeks and weeks and weeks at a time. reporter: if they make it out it is not as frequent as we d like. they ll stay weeks more, months more in step down facilities living a new harder life. their bodies are very de- conditioned they have been in bed for weeks if not months. they re getting fed through a tube in their stomach. they re breathing through a hole in their throat. reporter: monroe hospital has 55 patient birth and icu beds. they could send their patients to those lodger hospitals. now those calls are coming the other way. we re probably fielding six
MONROE, Wis. — In Wisconsin, the hospital bed crisis is a staffing crisis. Twenty months into the pandemic, the rate of staff departures started rising after last fall’s surge, a state organization says. Now in the midst of another surge where COVID hospitalizations have jumped from about 100 in July to about 1,700 currently, those departures are taking their toll..